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Lucas123 writes "After striking out at getting private investors to fund a new prototype, Safe Gun Technology (SGTi) is hoping it can generate $50,000 through a crowdfunding effort to build an assault-style rifle with fingerprint biometrics technology. Handgun and shotgun prototypes would follow shortly thereafter, the company said. SGTi, which is using the Indiegogo crowdfunding site for its Fund Safe Guns campaign, has so far raised just over $1,600. Several companies are working on developing smart gun technology, which can identify an authorized user through fingerprint, handgrip or RFID recognition techniques. Last week, a Massachusetts congressman submitted a bill that would require all U.S. handgun manufacturers to include smart gun technology in their weapons." I'm looking forward to the best car analogy that anyone can come up with on this topic.

I realize that stolen guns are a big item in criminal circles, but my guess is these will be "hacked". Additionally, if these guns prove less than reliable (doesn't fire by the "owner"). And finally who is actually clamoring for "smart gun" weaponry, besides the anti-gun nuts?

Bullshit. In the 10 years post Port Arthur the murder RATES in AUS and the US declined by almost exactly the same percentage. IIRC they were both within a percentage point of 31%. During that period, gun legislation tightened in AUS and liberalized in the US.

Somehow I don't think the parents leaving their ammo and guns around their kids will be the ones buying safe guns. On the other hand, it might be a good excuse for a responsible person to get such a gun so they can leave it lying around for the kids to play with.

And really, trying to create a safety sensitive to fingerprints is overengineered idiocy. A safety incorporating, for example, a combination lock would accomplish the same thing for most purposes and it could be trivially made as a simple and highly

I was well aware as a child that if I touched my father's guns (without his immediate supervision & permission), any injury the guns might cause would pale in comparison with what awaited me when my father found out.

I was well aware as a child that if I touched my father's guns (without his immediate supervision & permission), any injury the guns might cause would pale in comparison with what awaited me when my father found out.

Just so.

Teach the kids gun safety, basic marksmanship, and establish clearly that they'll be WISHING that all they'd done is kill a couple dozen people if you ever catch them playing with a gun....

The possible abuses of a "no gun" signal should be obvious with even a second's thought. For one thing, it'll be trivial for a crook to disable the tech on his gun in advance. Now he's the only person with a gun in that zone. This doesn't even bring up what someone with a slight bit of technical competence could do.

Most of the anti-gun or gun-control measures being suggested appear to have little thought behind them. Assault weapons aren't involved with crime - they're just ~scary~. Massive restrictions on suppressor ownership didn't fix a non-existent assassination problem. So on with these trite changes that ignore the cultural or societal problems that are the root cause of gun issues such as safety and firearms crime. As the parent poster points out, what will this new functionality 'fix'?

This lack of foresight is endemic in gun debates, and we so often end up spending time, money, political capital and voter interest on or fighting non-functional 'solutions'. We appear to lack answers to even basic questions like "How much time and money is being spent to correct those few situations this technological fix claims value in?" or " Is this an efficient application of our resources?"

This is not a case of 'every little bit helps' - time and money are finite resources, and they should be spent where they achieve the best outcome. If you had a goal of reducing crimes involving handguns, spending on weapon modifications, regulations, certifications, and registrations may very well achieve your goal. It's not the only way to achieve it though - compare spending that money on education, which also has a statistical association with crime reduction. How about strengthening cultural value of marriage (single-parent homes produce more criminal children, committing more severe crimes, especially when the father is absent)?

The problem is most gun legislation right now is completely irrational. On one side we have those who are conditioned to be terrified of guns, and on the other, we have people who fear any regulation - even reasonable regulation - as a threat to their way of life, an unacceptable lockdown by big brother. Both scramble for facts, but the heart of both sides is driven by some irrational terror.

Is asking for a popular democracy to resort to fact-based reasoning too much of a stretch?

It's like blowing your optimization budget on the initialization loop of your program. You make that ~2% really fast/efficient/whatever and you feel all warm and fuzzy while the 98% that's left is still a slow steaming worthless pile of crap.

Smart guns address a problem that affects ~2% of the problem with guns, is going to be ungodly expensive, slow to be adopted, practically impossible to enforce, and the first 10 or so generations of it aren't going to work as advertised anyway. And on top of that 90%

We're already there. Firearms are used hundreds of thousands of times per year to prevent or end assaults and other criminal acts. Let's assume that often-studied range of numbers is off by an order of magnitude. It still exceeds the number of murders, substantially. Happily, the only time I've ever had to point a gun at a person, it was to stop him from assaulting my wife and I in the middle of the night. And no need to actually shoot the idiot. I have, though, shot many, many dinners, but some badly injured animals out of their suffering, and enjoyed hundreds of hours of pleasant clay pigeon and target shooting. No gun deaths involved, and possibly one or two negative deaths for your stats.

I'm pretty sure anyone who feels the need to own or carry a gun is also pretty damned adamant about having it reliably and unquestionably work when they actually need it. The first time one of these things fails (even in a test) will be the last time anyone buys one.

I'd also like the ability to hand one of my handguns or rifles to a friend and allow them to use it. I don't, for example, like the idea of having swap magic RFID bracelets, or program in new fingerprint scans (or take off gloves!) in the middle of an emergency. Honestly, the people who think this stuff up (in terms of requiring all gun owners to have such) have obviously never actually imagined a gun-handling situation outside of a press conference.

It's interesting how rampant gun fan's paranoia is. This story isn't about forcing everyone to have the technology, it is about a company trying to get funding to develop the viable first version. It's like you won't even entertain the idea that the technology could exist or be trialled. Maybe some people might even want to buy it if it works. Is that so terrible, so frightening?

But what if I cut off the owner's hand and use it to fire the gun with? Huh?! Didn't think about that one, did you technology people? Then I could go around committing mass acts of violence and it'll look like the guy who got his hand cut off did it all. And you won't be able to prove it in court. See?

Proposal : the only validation method I think is usable is an implanted RFID tag with encryption. I don't think these exist yet, the current ones that can be implanted can be "cloned" because they emit a fixed data string when queried.

Why not fingerprints/palmprints? Validation is too slow, too many ways for the sensor to get obscured or some other failure to happen to cause the gun to not register the user instantly. Also, fingerprints/palmprints can be hacked easily.

You also need a powered RFID scanner to query the tag, which means either the owner's hand or the gun needs a power source to operate. I do not foresee these selling well if it only has a shelf life of a few months to a few years. The people who want a gun, want one that is reliable and can sit in a case for years and still work at a moment's notice. Swapping out a battery doesn't sound like something people will want to need to do....

Fingerprint ID for a gun won't work for obvious reasons. You can't guarantee fingerprints can be read if your finger is dirty or injured. Further more when you need to pull a trigger on a gun you need it to go off right then and not have to mess around with it.

Lots of government money has already been wasted on this concept only to conclude its not practical

All this will do is add a piece of technology that is more prone to breakage than the gun itself. One purpose of the weapon is to defend yourself, almost always, quickly. The last damned thing I want on my gun is another locking mechanism that could fail when I need it most.

Because nobody in their right mind is going to want a "smart" gun. I advocate for smart gun owners. In fact, I help train them. It is much more effective than the "smart gun" will ever be, and the cost will be about the same. Trying to fix stupid with technology is a losing bet.

Reliability is a sticking point when people ask advice for which gun to buy. You want it to shoot every time you pull the trigger. I'm not going to add a layer of uncertainty to a life-critical mechanical device. What if I need to use it during the winter when I'm likely to be wearing gloves? Or if it's raining and my hands are wet?
No thanks; we'll pass.

Lets look at some extra smart featuresa) RF signal to disable the gun around schools, malls and movie theatresb) ID + location beacon that is transmitted for 1 hour after any firingc) write only GPS time and location log of all firings. Anything within 5 minuts and 50m is logged as single event with total rounds fired countd) Friend of Foe ping with identification.e) remote disable using secure key, this must be active on all privately owned gunsf) ability to turn off features (a,b,d,e), but the gun will t

...on something that can easily hacked and never will work reliably, why not spend money on something much better, which can also easily hacked and never will work reliably? A gun, which refuses to shoot unarmed people?

That is one interpretation of the 2nd amendment, but by no means the only one. There is quite a spirited debate over what the intention of that was and whether it should apply to tanks, grenades, land mines and nuclear weapons just as much as it does to guns.

You leave work late one evening. You notice a group of trashy teens across the parking lot, but see similar groups often enough so think nothing of it. You start walking toward your car, and as soon as you've gotten committedly-far from the safety of your office building, the teens start moving quickly toward you. You notice two now have knives out.

You start running toward your car, and make it with a good 10+ second buffer before the thugs reach you. You press your thumb to the door lock and...

Bzzzt. Damn that paper cut you got right after lunch! You try again: Bzzzt. Third time: Bzzzt.

The thugs reach you, stab you 27 times, rape a few of the new holes, and take your iphone and wallet. They leave you to die, which you obligingly do roughly twelve minutes later.

Whether you "like" them or not, if you acknowledge that guns have any legitimate use, they need to just plain work when needed. Period. No papercuts preventing them from recognizing your fingerprints, no batteries to die, no "instant background check" to take 30 seconds to verify that you haven't started taking Prozac in the past few days.

And if you don't think guns have any legitimate purpose, well, too bad - Because the authors of our constitution did.

In plenty of juristictions, you can be in trouble if you're in possession of car keys whilst under the influence of drink or drugs.(BTW, are they not the same thing? Why the distinction? But I digress...)

How would this work with a 'smart' gun?

Your car keys are on the table when the cops bust the bar. You've just finished your 10th strong drink. No problem; someone (sober) in your entourage was going to drive you home.Your 'smart' gun, (why do I dislike that te

Much like the double rainbow guy, I can't help but ask...
"What does it mean? I don't know what it means..."

Really. What the fuck is an assault-style rifle? Have we not muddled the language enough yet?
An assault rifle is a fully automatic rifle that is designed for tactical operations.
An assault weapon is a semiautomatic rifle that is specifically named in the 1994 Federal Assault Weapons Ban, or has a certain combination of cosmetic features specifically identified in the 1994 Federal Assault Weapons B

An assault weapon is a semiautomatic rifle that is specifically named in the 1994 Federal Assault Weapons Ban, or has a certain combination of cosmetic features specifically identified in the 1994 Federal Assault Weapons Ban.

Not necessarily. Go to the 1994 Assault Weapons Ban (or the newer one, if you prefer), and you'll find a list of rifles that CANNOT be considered "assault weapons". If you take one of those rifles and add the cosmetic features you mentioned, they're still NOT assault weapons.

A woman is crossing a dark parking lot at night; she sees someone in a hoodie on the other side of the parking lot. The person in the hoodie obviously notices her with a predatory pause and tarts moving towards her Her car is between them. She runs for the car, the bad guy starts running towards her. She gets in RFID range; the car notices the keys in her purse. She reaches the drivers side of her car just as the bad guy reaches the passengers side. She opens the door because the RFID has authorized it. The bad guy opens the passenger door, because the RFID has authorized it.

Isn't she happy she had the RFID?

Gun:

You get into your house. You hear a crash from the bedroom. You run to investigate. A burglar has just successfully opened your gun case. He tries to shoot you; the gun fails to go off. You rush over. You struggle. You get in RFID range. The gun goes off during the struggle, and you're shot.

RFID keys are not uncommon on new cars now. Our new car has one (and it's not particularly high-end). What you suggest there is plausible, although the sensors may be sensitive enough to tell which door you are at. I'm not sure about that. I'll have to try it sometime.

We've been annoyed by it once when my wife wanted to leave her purse (with car keys) in the car. The car won't actually let you lock the doors in that situation because it realizes that the key is still present.

Last week, a Massachusetts congressman submitted a bill that would require all U.S. handgun manufacturers to include smart gun technology in their weapons."

Which will get struck down by the supreme court the second it hits their docket. Lets just stop pretending like the gun control lobby isn't trying to change the constitution. Because the ONLY way to achieve their goals is to do so. Lets have a vote, so we can all see it fail miserably and get on with our lives.

A lot of people think the framers didn't foresee the advanced weaponry that we have today, and would have never included it in the right to bare arms. This is a ludicrous argument. At the time the constitution was written, they had CANNONS. Cannons are still legal to this day! Later, with the invention of primers somehow the right to bare arms was a bit too much... because if you could just slide a shell into the cannon it was somehow a lot more dangerous than blackpowder. So clearly they never thought of repeating rifles! Ah ha! That's the problem, they never thought people could rapidly fire a gun, over and over... oh wait, let me introduce you to the Girandoni air rifle. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Girandoni_Air_Rifle [wikipedia.org]It could fire 22 rounds without reloading or refilling the air reservoir. It had no muzzle flash, no smoke, was nearly silent and fired a ball equivalent to a modern 45 acp that was deadly at over 150 yards. This gun was in many ways superior to modern assault rifles and was in wide production and in use by the Austrian army 8 years before our constitution was adopted. There were plenty of Austrian mercenaries carrying them in the states as well and it was a hanging offense to be caught with one by the British military because they were so deadly.

So tell us again how the framers had no idea how dangerous guns would become. Or how in Chicago, where we have the strictest gun laws in the country, the rate of death by firearm is higher than it is in Afghanistan, and active war zone, where it's common for people to carry full auto AK's.

Either you're kidding or you don't have the remotes clue how the US constitution works. Read up on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Crow_laws [wikipedia.org] which were used to keep the poor and minorities from voting for nearly a century. Preventing someone from expressing their constitutional rights via red tape is no different than outright banning it all together.

Woodcraft carries sawstop table saws. They're gaining popularity. The main turnoff for me is that it can be triggered by cutting wood with high moisture content. The brake can be disabled, but if you forget, a new brake cartridge costs $70, and the blade will usually be ruined. Carbide blades are fairly expensive. And for a dado blade which requires a more expensive brake - total cost could be around $300

sub-machine guns are basically handguns that are fully automatic capable and (usually) have additional furniture to accommodate fully automatic operation. All of the various SMGs out there fire handgun ammunition. For example, the Uzi that everyone's seen on tv and movies fires 9mm rounds. Typical handgun ammunition doesn't go much more than 1200 fps. There are some handgun ammo's out there that buck this general rule of thumb, but this still doesn't compare to what rifle ammunition frequently does - and t

Sub-machine guns have shoulder stocks for stability and recoil management. Most SMG-styled weapons that can not fire fully automatically are carbines, and fall under the "rifle" classification. Something like the Micro-Uzi, lacking a shoulder stock, is called a "machine pistol". If modified for semi-automatic operation it would just be a pistol.

Another factor with SMG's is that they are, by definition, capable of fully automatic fire. As such, they are not available to the majority of the US public with

An "assault rifle" is usually just a magazine fed hunting rifle. There's nothing particularly special about such weapons. They just look big and scary because they don't have any wood trim and they come with a pistol grip.

Although professional shooters are the best and most appropriate beta testers for this kind of new technology. This stuff should not be forced on the rest of us until cops are fine with it.

What really get's my goat is that in Dianne Feinstein's most recent attempt at an assault weapon ban, she specified barrel shrouds as a prohibited feature of assult weapons. A barrel shroud's primary function is to protect the user from getting burnt by a hot barrel or gas tube. It would take a semi-competent weapon designer about 20 minutes to draw up a design to circumvent that restriction. It's just embarrassing that our legislators trying to ban guns don't know how the hell guns work and are too chea

For the curious, the AC is referring to Rep. Diana DeGette's statements at a forum, where she said

“I will tell you these are ammunition, they’re bullets, so the people who have those know they’re going to shoot them, so if you ban them in the future, the number of these high capacity magazines is going to decrease dramatically over time because the bullets will have been shot and there won’t be any more available.”

So explain to me why it is difficult to imagine a scenario where multiple assailants would require 3-5 shots each to disable or kill. I have a natural born right to self-defense and defense of my loved ones. I want the absolute best tool for the job. If the best tool has a standard magazine capacity of 30 rounds - I want it. My possession of the tools of self defense harms no one.

It's nice that you live in a nice, crime-free area of the world, but it is absolutely improper to think that everyone lives in the same situation.

30 round magazines are very useful for taking down packs of coyote or wild dogs. But you don't NEED a reason to own a high capacity magazine You don't need to have a reason to own a speed boat or a 200mph motorcycle either, and there is even less of a reason for those than a high capacity magazine.

They are also great for practice. Load at home, not at the range where range time is costing money.

But don't tell the anti-gun group that target shooting is fun.. it would ruin all of their arguments about 'guns only designed to kill people'. Last time I checked, guns were designed to shoot bullets. Some bullets are designed specifically to kill people, others are designed to kill animals, and some are designed just for target shooting.

There's no reason for any civilian to have more than 9 rounds in a firearm.

The beauty of our Constitution is the government doesn't have the power to tell citizens what they need. Indeed, it's the other way around. How would you react if the government proposed to ban certain words or phrases because you don't really "need" to use them in everyday speech?

let's try some equivalency treatments...
"There's no reason for any civilian to have more than 4 cylinders in their car's engine" "There's no reason for any civilian to have more than 3 pairs of shoes" "There's no reason for any civilian to have more than 2 children" "There's no reason for any civilian to have more than a $50,000 salary" "There's no reason for any civilian to have [anything that can't be justified by a specific need]" ETC

It's called Freedom, people. It's what America is supposed to be about.

And before douchebags start dragging all the political bullshit in, I support the firing of pretty much every politician currently in office. Scrap the 2 parties completely for all I care. Let the womerns have all the birth control and abortions and the men have all the liquor and dope they want. Whatever. Freedom is the only way forward.

Also for the record, I can disprove that suggested penile association with photos.

And that's exactly what the Senate Gun bill that would ban "assault' weapons did.

Mini-14s are banned if they look one way, and legal if they look another way. Both are weapons that can handle 30 round clips and will kill people, but the look is what makes one dangerous, and one not.

I assume they're looking at the police and military market since assault rifles are restricted class III items in the US for civilian ownership and not overly cheap.

Class III items are full-auto, which are police and military weapons.

And they're not expensive because they are inherently more costly. They are expensive because any weapons manufactured after 1986 are still banned for civilian possession. The capped supply, along with the non-liquidity of the weapons themselves due to transfer costs and requirements (including may-issue permission from your local sheriff or police chief, good luck unless you're well connected), are the cause of how expensive they are. A factory fresh military Colt M4 doesn't cost anything more than a consumer Colt M4.

That's fine for TPTB, of course. Because civilians that can afford such expensive toys are doing well enough that they're on the side of the status quo, and aren't exactly going to take up those arms in a revolution when the army will defend that status quo.

Of course, since mags can rather easily be 3D printed and don't fail until after multiple reloads, any and all attempts to ban 30rd mags is utterly doomed to failure. For that matter, stamping them out of sheet metal or using molds ain't exactly rocket science either. So pretending that banning the sale of 30rd mags will do fuck all means you've been doing way too much LSD. Not even marijuana could make you that moronic. Now get off the drugs, and stop fucking yourself with your 3d printed Obama butt plug.

record sales figures from the past year or so disagree with your decline idea

shortages everywhere, and manufacturers / distributors can't keep up with the demand level to the point that they are now unable to build their annual stockpile for the hunting seasons ahead (they usually start stockpiling in the spring/summer months to meet the fall demand) so there will be more shortages later this year

"Locks" like what is being suggested here is simply another point of failure on a system that is optimized to have as few failure points as possible. No one that knows anything about guns will willingly buy this.

And that the owner must be required to wear special jewelry, have on no gloves, and have a perfectly clean gun (and fingers!) in order to defend himself, right? And if the owner is out of town and his wife wants to use the gun to save her life? Hold on, Mr. Home Invasion Rapist Guy, I have to get my husband on the phone so he can use his iPhone app remotely to help me re-program this gun I'll be using to keep you from assaulting me.

I want to be able to toss one of my guns to someone to whom it's not "lo

That most gun owners don't WANT this type of tech, that could potentially bork and not allow you to fire at a critical moment.

A gun works JUST fine now....simple, mechanical, etc.

And by the way...can those folks in MA either vote out said congressman putting that bill forth, or just contain such laws to your state if you want them that way?

Sheesh, if this type thing comes about, I guess we'll see more efforts like recent ones, to have states certify guns make and labeled for "in state sales only" to get around the Feds being able to mess with and regulate them.

That most gun owners don't WANT this type of tech, that could potentially bork and not allow you to fire at a critical moment.

A gun works JUST fine now....simple, mechanical, etc.

It sounds like they just figured out who their customers really are. It's not the gun owner, it's the gun opposition.

The campaign is a call to arms (pardon the pun) for the clueless, emotional, never-took-history masses to fund them, so then they can then impose the technology on the gun owners against their will by lobbying for laws to require it, which is step 2 of the plan.

Bonus points if they can get the law to require only "certified" smart gun technologies, of which only SGTi will have the required certification.

Hanlon's razor: "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity." Those in favor of gun control side can't even use multiple national tragedy as an excuse to take away rights from American citizens. Think about how astonishing that is for a moment. This is the country wiling to throw out almost every part of the constitution with just a mention of "think of the children," but children are ACTUALLY dying, and they've got nothing.

The campaign is a call to arms (pardon the pun) for the clueless, emotional, never-took-history masses to fund them

You are now the wikipedia example of the logical fallacy of ad hominem.

Those that support gun disarmament that actually have a clue are not going to contribute to this. They won't contribute to anything that will enable continued gun manufacture. In other words, they don't want guns to be safer, they want them to be gone.

The emotional side of that crowd really believes a safer gun can save lives. Those that wish to force disarmament aren't really interested in the criminal side, obviously, because if they were, they knew abolishment won't get guns out of the hands of criminals

And I know even more children who would be alive if the FBI/BATF didn't use incendiary gas grenades. And one rogue LAPD officer too. One can decide if the latter would be beneficial. But the former would have.